Knox declares innocence; codefendant blames her

BY ANDREA VOGT, SEATTLEPI.COM

Updated 9:00 am, Monday, June 27, 2011

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox sits in Perugia's Court of Appeal during the hearing of her appeal against her murder conviction on June 27, 2011 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox's former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher's murder.

Photo: Franco Origlia, Getty Images

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox sits in Perugia's Court of...

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox arrives in Perugia's court of Appeal during the hearing of her appeal against her murder conviction on June 27, 2011 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox's former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher's murder.

Photo: Franco Origlia, Getty Images

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox arrives in Perugia's court...

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox speaks with her legal Carlo Dalla Vedova in Perugia's court of Appeal during the first session of her appeal against her murder conviction on June 27, 2011 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox's former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher's murder.

Photo: Franco Origlia, Getty Images

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox speaks with her legal Carlo...

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Rudy Guede testifies during the appeal hearing of Amanda Knox over the guilty verdict in the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia's court of Appeal on June 27, 2011 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox's former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher's murder.

Photo: Franco Origlia, Getty Images

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Rudy Guede testifies during the appeal...

PERUGIA, ITALY - JUNE 27: Amanda Knox's mother Edda Mellas attends the appeal hearing of Amanda Knox over the guilty verdict in the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia's court of Appeal on June 27, 2011 in Perugia, Italy. American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder of Ms Knox's former British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007. Their trial took place in December 2009 with Knox and Sollecito receiving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. Rudy Guede, an unemployed man from Ivory Coast, was also convicted of the Meredith Kercher's murder.

PERUGIA – Rudy Guede refused to tell a jury Monday his version of what happened the night Meredith Kercher was killed, but stood by a letter he wrote pinning the blame on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

"The truth is what I wrote in that letter," Guede said, referring to a letter he wrote in 2010.

At the beginning of Monday's hearing, presiding Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman denied Knox the right to confront Guede directly, saying she could make a statement only after the witness had testified.

After Guede's testimony, Knox, who turns 25 in July, said she was "shocked and anguished" by what she had heard, adding that she had no idea why he would blame her.

"The only time the three of us have ever been together is in this judicial courtroom," she said.

Edda Mellas, Knox's mother, told reporters after the hearing that Guede had missed his chance to tell the truth.

"Rudy had a chance to do something good and tell the truth and he didn't,” she said. “He chose not to clear it up. I think the appeal is going very well and after the results of the DNA review come out later this week, it will be going even better."

Guede wrote the 2010 letter when fellow prisoner Mario Alessi's statements that Guede told him Knox and Sollecito were innocent became public.

Alessi repeated that statement earlier in June, but Monday, Guede himself denied that any such conversation took place, adding that they spoke only about "soccer and cinema."

Guede chose not to respond to Knox's lawyers’ attempts to get him to talk about the night of the murder, saying he was there simply to counter Alessi's previous testimony.

Knox and Sollecito are appealing their 2009 conviction in which they were found guilty of killing Kercher, a British student who was Knox's roommate, in November 2007.

They are serving 26 and 25 years, respectively. Guede was found guilty in a separate fast-track trial and sentenced to 30 years, which was halved on appeal.

As if the appeal wasn't bizarre enough, two convicts were called by the prosecution as counter witnesses Monday to contradict several inmates called by the defense earlier this month. They maintained they had overheard in prison conversations about a plot among other inmates to testify in exchange for money and benefits, such as reduced prison time.

The person they heard was arranging things, they said, was Sollecito's attorney, Giulia Bongiorno, who heads up Italy's parliamentary justice committee. She forcefully denied the corruption accusations in the break afterwards and vowed to file charges and take legal action against her accusers.

Inmate Alexander Illicet from Serbia Montenegro said Luciano Aviello (who testified earlier this month that his brother had killed Kercher) had agreed to pin the murder on his brother in exchange for 158,000 Euros – money Aviello desperately needed to pay for a sex change he had been wanting.

At the last hearing, Aviello said he could tell investigators where the murder weapon and Kercher's keys were hidden, in a wall by the scene of the crime.

Police have never searched for those items, said head of the Perugia police, Monica Napoleoni, because they did not believe Aviello to be reliable.

Many times before, he had told Perugian police that bodies were buried in locations, that, after checks, turned out not to be true, testified another policeman.

But judging by the pained look on the faces of the jurors, the convicts' stories were little more than a bizarre sideshow compared with the testimony of Guede, who said that back in March 2010, he had finally grown tired of accusations against him and wrote an angry, exasperated letter to his lawyers, directly naming Knox and Sollecito as Kercher's killers.

He stuck by that story Monday.

"The truth is what I wrote in that letter," said Guede. "But it is not up to me to decide who killed Meredith. I always said who was there that awful night.”

Guede's story has always been that he was in the bathroom listening to his iPod when he heard a scream, and ran out to find Kercher in her room bleeding . Two other people had fled the scene, he said, after telling him "black man found, black man guilty."

He claims he tried to stop Kercher's bleeding with bathroom towels, but then panicked and fled.

His DNA and shoeprints were found throughout the crime scene.

The courts didn't believe his story, though. Italy's high court has upheld his conviction, ruling he participated in the murder along with two other people.

Sollecito, 27, also spoke, reminding the jury of other contradicting statements made by Guede in the past, urging them not to listen to "suppositions that have destroyed my life and hers."

"Guede has never seen me before in his life, even for a moment," he said.

Knox's best hope for overturning her appeal now lies in the independent review of two contested pieces of forensic evidence, the results of which are expected later this week.

Her lawyers and family have always maintained that Guede was not a reliable witness, and that the hard evidence – or lack thereof – would be the element that finally sets her free.

The forensic results are expected to be debated in July, with a decision coming sometime in the early fall.